Statistical mechanics relies on the complete though probabilistic description of a system in terms of all the microscopic variables. Its object is to derive therefrom static and dynamic properties involving some reduced set of variables. The elimination of the irrelevant variables is guided by the maximum entropy criterion, which produces the probability law carrying the least amount of informa...

This paper is a study of fuzzy type theory (FTT) with partial functions. Out of several possibilities we decided tointroduce a special value ”∗” that represents ”undefined”. In the interpretation of FTT, this value lays outside of thecorresponding domain. In the syntax it can be naturally represented by the description operator acting on the empty(fuzzy) set, because choosing an element from it...

We introduce a projection operator over concepts in a given description logic that produces least subsumers of concepts in a language fragment that satisfies additional syntactic requirements specified as a parameter of the operator. The operator complements existing operators for concept selection and concept ordering that have been proposed in earlier work [3, 4]. We show how, altogether, the...

Due to the constantly growing number of information sources, intelligent information retrieval becomes a more and more important task. We model information sources by description logic (DL) terminologies. The commonalities of user-speci ed examples can be computed by the least common subsumer (LCS) operator. However, in some cases this operator delivers too general results. In this article we s...

A closed description of observation processes must necessarily include the observer, too. In order to find a basis for such a unified description, an operator algebra is developed which enables a formal description of at least a significant majority of cognitive processes. It is found that this operator algebra, which is a noncommutative semiring of a type already known in literature, has aston...

Teams face a wide variety of tasks, have a wide variety of work styles, and may work in geographically distributed locations. While many people believe networked computers will enhance teamwork, research into how this will be accomplished is in its infancy. And... while networks are getting faster and cheaper, they are often overloaded. Computer systems supporting teams must adapt to a wide var...

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that an important, naturally-occurring, and disciplined form of reflection in software systems is readily expressible at the architectural level by using a new architectural operator (connector) called Engage. We begin by extending a simple data-flow architectural description language with this operator. We illustrate the expressive power of Engage by us...